Treat followed treat at a Slow Food Vermont potluck dinner in Burlington in January, but it was the meal’s final dish that lingered in my memory.

The maple pecan pie itself was delicious. Replacing highly processed Karo corn syrup with natural Vermont maple is an improvement all by itself. And though both syrups are sugar, plain and simple, the maple pie seemed less painfully sweet than my memories of Southern pecan pie.

But I also loved the story the pie maker, Stephan Cantor, told about the recipe’s provenance. Cantor and her husband produce maple syrup from their sugarbush, Deep Mountain Maple, in West Glover. They have been settled in Vermont for 30 years, but Stephan Cantor is Georgia born and bred.

After the dinner, I called her to ask for the recipe.

“My mother made a fantastic pecan pie, but the main ingredient is Karo,” she recalled. As a sugarmaker, she thought, “Well, I can make this pie even better.”

She tweaked her mother’s recipe, substituting maple for corn syrup and adding an additional egg to make sure the pie set firmly.

“For many years I always brought that pie to our community Thanksgiving. One of my good friends said, ‘If you are using Vermont maple syrup and Georgia pecans, you should call it Reconciliation Pie.’”

Cantor took the advice — but failed to convince her mother that North and South had been appropriately reconciled.

“My mother came for Thanksgiving, and of course I expected her to make her Southern specialty,” Cantor said. “She said, ‘If you want maple in it, you can make the pie.’”

I’m the descendant of a dearly loved Georgia grandmother whose Southern drawl abated not a whit during the 50 years she was married to my Hyde Park grandfather. I’m not sure she ever became entirely reconciled to life in Vermont — its harsh winters, our sharp-edged rural accent, the brisker pace at which we live. She showed us her love in Southern fried chicken, grits, creamed potatoes and lace cookies. Her pecan pie, I assume, was made with Karo.

So, with thoughts of Sara Smith Page, I baked Reconciliation Pie last week, tinkering only slightly by substituting some granulated maple sugar for the brown sugar, and toasting the pecans to deepen their flavor. I think my grandmother would have loved it.